Energy and Carbon Savings on Campus – and the winner is….

I’d like to use this Earth Day opportunity to congratulate one of the heroes in the eco-technology movement: the University of Maine at Farmington. During the past month, the non-profit Climate Savers Computing Initiative (which was co-founded by Intel) sponsored a competition amongst 19 member universities, to see which one could recruit the highest percentage of their faculty, staff, and students to pledge to sustainable computing practices. The U of Maine Farmington bested them all, getting 24 percent of their campus residents to take the Climate Savers Computing Initiative pledge during the past month. For their campus, these commitments translate into 125 tons of CO2 savings per year, equal to 164 kilowatt-hours of energy and $17,000 in energy costs.

Overall, the competition resulted in 17,000 new pledges toward the mission of Climate Savers Computing, which result in 3,000 tons of carbon per year averted and 4.2 million kilowatt-hours of energy saved across the 19 campuses. Every university did a great job, and our planet is the big winner. More details are at http://www.climatesaverscomputing.org/news/press-releases/april-22-2009

However, there’s one more set of prizes to be awarded, for the video contest that ran in parallel with the Climate Savers Computing pledge contest. On May 4, check back here or at http://www.powerdownfortheplanet.org/video/

for the results of the video competition and a link to the winning videos!

Have a great Earth Day 2009 everyone!